Ritter retirement not routine

Jonathon Braden

Saturday

Jun 26, 2010 at 12:01 AMJun 26, 2010 at 7:00 AM

When you live in the same house and work at the same place for almost 20 years, you develop routines. Kathy Ritter, the outgoing Rock Bridge High School principal, has been an administrator at the school since 1992.

Every weekday, her alarm goes off at 6 a.m. She steps out of bed, strides 15 steps and enters the shower. She completes her morning routine — applying makeup, drying her hair and putting on deodorant — all while stretching.

“I do not waste a movement,” she said.

She walks into the kitchen and pours herself a bowl of Raisin Bran. She might read the paper for 30 seconds, munch on her cereal, then toss the newspaper aside, rinse out her bowl and step into her black 1999 Infiniti G20.

She’ll cruise to Rock Bridge, eventually hanging a left at Southampton Drive and sliding into spot No. 10 in the school’s lot, ending her seven-minute journey.

It’s a simple routine, and it more or less represents the life of Ritter since she returned to Rock Bridge 18 years ago.

She likes it that way — simple. She believes the fewer rules the better. And she has tried to limit teacher distractions, letting them focus more on student achievement and less on the next big education idea.

Now, after more than 50 years of combined work in the Columbia school district, Kathy and her husband, former Superintendent Jim Ritter, have planned a retirement full of traveling the world.

“I have no idea what life’s going to be like without getting up every morning and driving to Rock Bridge,” she said.

Kathy Ritter taught math at Jefferson Junior High School, the University of Missouri and Rock Bridge. But the bulk of her career was spent at Rock Bridge as an administrator.

From 1992 to 2006, she was the assistant principal for activities. In the years before Ritter took over as principal in 2007, she said, “We floundered a little bit.”

She declined to elaborate, but former Rock Bridge Principal Wayne Walker said the school had lost its “freedom with responsibility” feel that he helped install when he opened the school as principal in 1973. The idea that students can have unassigned time to do whatever they please but they also must be accountable for what they do.

That didn’t happen in the years after Walker left in 1992, he said. Then Ritter came in and promoted “freedom with responsibility” again.

But Ritter said it was Walker from whom she learned how to work with students, perhaps her strongest attribute as an administrator. And she learned to listen to her staff.

“I always felt like I had her full and undivided attention,” said Dan Ware, social studies teacher at Rock Bridge. “No matter what we were discussing, for that moment, it was the most important thing in the world.”

Now, it’s up to Mark Maus, a 32-year-old former assistant principal at Oak Park High School in the North Kansas City School District.

For him, Ritter has just three suggestions: Hire the best teachers, spport those teachers, and “don’t forget what it’s like to be a kid.”

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